The present invention relates to a conveyor for feeding flexible, non-slidable goods to a continuously operating horizontal packing machine.
Conveyors for feeding packing goods to a packing machine of the type under discussion have been known. Such conveyors are provided with a feeding conveyor means and with packing good-supporting means spaced from each other at adjustable distances. Conveyors for packing machines, in which a spacing between grippers can be adjusted are known, arranged in various construction forms. This adjustment of the spacing is necessary for adjusting of the conveyor to narrow formats of the goods being conveyed. The spacing between the grippers in the majority of the known conveyors cannot be adjusted in a stepless manner.
To avoid the above disadvantage it has been suggested to steer the grippers freely movable in the conveyor track by means of a star wheel driven by the packing machine. Such a construction has been disclosed in West German Pat. No. 11 50 021.
The grippers in the aforementioned publication are controllable in a continual or stepless fasion; however the disclosed conveyor is suitable only for slidable goods because the goods being fed towards the packing machine must slide along the extent of the conveyor.
The conveyor, in which flexible goods are layed on the conveyor band at uniform intervals from each other has been disclosed in East German publication No. DD-WP 84 596. In this construction, goods being fed towards the packing machine have been brought on the inclined roller track unless they reach a specific stop member. This stop member is pivotable outwardly together with the roller track portion positioned shortly before the end of the roller track. The pivoting movement of the stop member together with the portion of the roller track in the upward direction has been caused by the rotation of a single revolution shaft of the collecting packing machine, whereby the front portion of the commodity being fed could slide onto the conveyor band. The following commodities have been at this point retained. Only stowable goods could be separated by the above disclosed conveyor. Since it was impossible to mechanically separate non-slidable or non-stowable, goods packing machines known at the present time have been operated with intermissions to enable an operator to lay the goods being conveyed onto the conveyor band by hand. Supporting strips, which must be displaced when the format of the good being conveyed by the conveyor is changed, have served as orienting elements. The output of these known machines is, however, limited because of the standstill periods in the working cycle of the packing machine.